Efficient separation of strontium in different environments with novel acid-resistant silica-based ion exchanger

Radioactive strontium (90Sr) is widespreadly concerned due to its high biochemical toxicity, relatively long half-life, high fission yield and potential special applications in heat source and medical field. Herein, a novel acid-resistant silica-based adsorbent Sb2O5/SiO2 was prepared by a two-step method, i.e. vacuum impregnation followed by oxidation. The adsorbent was characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, EDS, BET, FT-IR and XPS techniques, which revealed its characterization of small particle size (75–150 μm), abundant functional groups and well-crystallized structure. The experimental results revealed Sb2O5/SiO2 exhibited good adsorption selectivity for Sr in pH 9–3 M HNO3 solution, the adsorption equilibriums were obtained within 5 min in pH 6 solution and 30 min in 1 M HNO3 solution with the adsorption capacities of 160.6 mg/g and 51.8 mg/g, respectively. Moreover, it also demonstrated good application potential in medical isotope preparation area as efficient strontium-yttrium (Sr-Y) separation was achieved with the separation factor over 7769 in pH 6 solution. Furthermore, the column experiments confirmed that Sr could be effectively removed both in seawater and simulated high level liquid waste (HLLW), and the purity of Y could reach to 99.7 % in Sr-Y separation. Finally, density functional theory (DFT) calculations confirmed that the adsorption mechanism was ion exchange between Sr(II) and H+ (in Sb-OH), and the adsorption was accompanied by the transfer of charge and the decrease of adsorption energy.